Ah, the 90s—the last decade where you could wear flannel and still be considered fashionably rebellious instead of just fashionably clueless. Remember those halcyon days when the only things competing for your attention were your Tamagotchi’s incessant beeping and the haunting echo of your modem’s "connect" sound? Yes, friends, it was a magical time when "streaming" meant figuring out who was getting the last sip of Crystal Pepsi at the party, and "social media" meant passing notes in class.
Sigh. Sometimes I genuinely feel like I’m stuck in a time warp where the only real progression we’ve made is the ability to send memes that would make my younger self cringe. Back in the day, "surfing the web" was an Olympic feat that involved balancing your body on a fragile telephone line while your 56K modem screeched like a banshee giving birth. And God forbid your mom picked up the phone; she might as well have hit the "self-destruct" button on your hopes of ever finishing that AOL chat session. Oh, the drama!
And can we talk about our actual social lives? Forget texting; if you wanted to get in touch with someone, you had to call their house and hope their parents didn’t answer. You’d get about 30 seconds of bliss before uncomfortable encounters with a parent turned your stomach into a black hole of awkwardness. “Can I speak to your daughter? Is she there?” Cue the cringe. These days, kids swing from "sliding into DMs" like it's some kind of Olympic sport, while we were left to play the customer service-style game of telephone. “Hello? Is your refrigerator running? Well, then you better catch it before it gets away!”
And nostalgia, my friends, is just a euphemism for realizing how entirely broke we are. Remember when everyone had to carry around their entire lives in their backpacks? Be it an oversized Trapper Keeper filled with scented gel pens, or a Discman that stood in as a portable shrine to your awkward teenage angst, you were never without the weight of a decade's worth of dreams and mixed tapes on your shoulders. Oh, for the days when stacking CD cases in a room like Jenga was the epitome of adulting. Now we just clutter our minds with algorithms while curating Spotify playlists titled "Songs for Crying in the Shower."
So, while we stumble through various social media platforms, posting about our day in 280 characters or less, let’s take a moment to acknowledge our roots in all their scrunchie-wearing, slap bracelet glory. Because honestly, the only thing more absurd than the idea that we actually thought boy bands had staying power is the fact that we’re still searching for mixtapes that take us back… even if it means reliving our awkwardness one dial-up tone at a time.